Using Data Mining to Get Inside U.S. Voters' Heads

(Bloomberg) -- I had spent about a half hour in the headquarters of Cambridge Analytica before I realized why my arrival at the tech firm—in a low-rise office building lodged inconspicuously on a dead-end service alley behind the Japanese Embassy, a block from Piccadilly—had been greeted so warmly. The company’s staff had been primed to attend to a psychological abnormality.

“You’re in the top half percent of openness for everyone in Pennsylvania, which is quite stark,” marveled analytics director Alexander Tayler. “This is like a three-sigma event, to find someone that far out!”